Thread by @tzimmer_history

“Beißhemmung” – German, meaning: inhibition to bite/attack.

It’s a term that I believe captures much of the Democratic establishment’s reaction to the radicalizing Republican assault on democracy and civil rights quite well.

My essay for @G_der_Gegenwart:

https://twitter.com/G_der_Gegenwart/status/1500366202987761664

Republicans are engaged in an authoritarian assault on the political system, embrace extremists who fantasize about committing acts of violence against Democrats, and plan on finding a reason, any reason, to impeach Joe Biden as soon as they get the chance.

How can we explain that many Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option and a return to “normalcy” imminent, even as Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democrats the real “enemy” and Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate?

One important explanatory factor is age: Many Democratic leaders came up in a very different political environment, when there was indeed a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in Congress – and they are longing for a return to the days of amity across party lines.

Crucially, this inability to grapple in earnest with the post-Obama reality in which Democratic politicians are almost universally considered members of an “Un-American” faction by most Republicans has deeper ideological roots.

Some establishment Democrats seem to feel a kinship with their Republican opponents grounded in a worldview of white elite centrism and status-quo ideology – they seem to believe that it is high time to push back against the “radical” forces of “leftism” and “wokeism.”

The Right’s dogma that the world works best when it’s run by (predominantly wealthy, predominantly male) white elites – that this is, in fact, the “natural order” of things that needs to be defended and upheld – evidently has some appeal beyond the conservative camp.

Many Democratic elites also seem all too willing to accept conservative ideas of who is and who represents the “real America,” and they still seem to operate from a premise of defining “white” as the American “normal.”

This assumption of a white “normal” still governs the American political and cultural discourse. Once we start paying attention to how it distorts the picture, we find it everywhere – the pervasive perpetuation of a political, social, and cultural hierarchy of white domination.

This serves to perpetuate one specific idea of what America should be: A nation of and for white Christians, in which white Christians count as the norm and get to define who does and does not belong, and where the interests and sensibilities of white Christians reign supreme.

The GOP has been focused solely on the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives for decades and Republicans are explicitly claiming to be the sole proponents of this “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America.

That’s why conservatives are willing to dismiss Democratic numerical majorities: They don’t count because they are based on a coalition of people whose status as members of the body politic is, at best, considered provisional and can always be revoked.

Many Democrats seem to have a hard time shaking such ideas of the (white) “normal,” of who does and who doesn’t count as “real America.” And so they seem unwilling to go against those “real” Americans, opting to go against the interests of their own majority coalition instead.

The constant attempts to normalize a radicalizing Republican Party also have a lot to do with two foundational myths that have always shaped the collective imaginary: the myth of American exceptionalism and the myth of white innocence.

Much of the Democratic elite still subscribes to an exceptionalist understanding that America is fundamentally good and inexorably on its way to overcoming whatever vestigial problems there might still be.

It builds on a mythical tale of America’s past, describing democracy as old, consolidated, and exceptionally stable, ignoring the fact that multiracial democracy started not even 60s years ago. Acknowledging what the GOP has become goes against the pillars of that worldview.

Finally, the American political discourse is still shaped by the paradigm of white innocence. Economic anxiety, anti-elite backlash, or just liberals being mean – whatever animates white people’s extremism, it must not be racism and they cannot be blamed for their actions.

The idea of white innocence also clouds the perspective on Republican elites: Since they cannot possibly be animated by reactionary white nationalism, they must be motivated by more benign forces – maybe they are just cowards, or they’re being seduced by the mean demagogue.

“I actually like Mitch McConnell,” Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they’re good guys, they’ll snap out of it. Any minute now, promise.

It’s the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of GOP radicalization. The survival of American democracy might depend on whether or not Democrats can accept that there can be no more politics as usual.

More here:

https://twitter.com/g_der_gegenwart/status/1500366202987761664

Why do so many Democratic leaders ignore the nature of the political conflict and still expect an imminent return to “normalcy”?

I also wrote about it in my column for @GuardianUS a few week ago:

https://twitter.com/gdnusopinion/status/1496080463181410307

Addendum: I’m getting a lot of “Black people vote Democratic and that proves *white* Dem. elites can’t be influenced by ideas of white innocence and whiteness as normal” - from blue checks with large followings too - and I just want to say: people, you are telling on yourselves.

For instance: